March 16, 2013

It should be no surprise that those given access to power over others will tend to use it, but we seem to be getting more than our fair share of lying cheating bastard (henceforward LCB) stories lately.

Selling horsemeat for beef, the resignation of the head of the RC church in Scotland, accusations about the former CE of the Liberal Democrats, lies by Teresa May over immigration, lies by Ian Duncan Smith over free labour for big companies in the guise of support for job seekers, endless stories of sexual misconduct by RC priests, the investigation into Jimmy Saville turning up all sorts of other nastiness, phone hacking, police corruption, appalling behaviour by the companies paid our money to help people back to work, lies over the change from DLA to so-called Personal Independence Payments, lies over what Hilary Mantel is supposed to have said by newspapers and politicians alike, – these are just what springs immediately come to mind.

Is their a remedy? The State depends on the acquiescence of the people and on the support of cronies in the big corporates. Without breaking the law do everything you can to simply ignore it. Do all you can to make it an irrelevance and the big corporates superfluous. Give away as little power and information as possible. Routinely use a proxy web server, routinely encrypt e-mails, turn off wifi and Bluetooth whenever possible on your mobile phone, (you'll save battery life anyway), pay cash or barter for goods and services, reduce your dependence on centrally provided infrastructure like power and water by upgrading insulation, installing solar power or heat exchangers wherever feasible.

Building a new society inside the shell of the old one – make government and the corporate state irrelevant.

January 27, 2013

C4's conspiracy thriller Utopia has a fascinating web-site attached, describing how we are being watched by government and others and our privacy invaded - but also the many ways in which we collaborate, willingly or from ignorance, in that process. Did you know for example that the government are considering ways to use ANPR cameras at filling stations to restrict access to fuel for uninsured drivers? Of course it
doesn't have to be the uninsured. You just might be on a list somewhere and making you buy fuel more frequently keeps you under observation and limits your mobility.

Remember - just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they are not out to get you...

December 19, 2012

The government says it will 'permit' the marriage of same sex couples in churches and synagogues etc except for the established Church of England and for some reason the Church of Wales which was disestablished in 1920. Apparently those two bodies are against the idea so they are going to be forbidden to do it. Strange logic don't you think?

If the CofE are against the idea why do they need to be forbidden? Why forbod the Church of Wales when it isn't even an established church? More to the point though, is this really an equality issue or is it about freedom? Chris Dillow suggests the latter:

Think of it this way. Over a very wide domain, the state already takes
no interest in my choice of marriage partners. It is indifferent to
their age (subject only to age of consent laws), ethnicity,
psychological compatibility or appearance. Why, then, should it care
about the contents of their trousers? Viewed in this frame, permitting
gay marriage merely expands the range of characteristics of my marriage
partners about which the state doesn't care. It's a small step to
greater freedom. We could rename "equal marriage" as "free marriage."

I think he's right. Making this an issue of equal rights allows all the old nonsense about 'political correctness' to be trotted out by the right wing dinosaurs of the right. The left by accepting this framing of the issue have lost the chance to re-attach themselves to the idea of freedom and so handed yet another stick to the right with which they can be beaten. Chris Dillow again:

So, why is the issue so often framed as one of equality rather than
freedom? I suspect conservatives have an instinctive aversion to gay
marriage, and prefer to rationalize this as a big issue of equality
rather a small issue of freedom, because they feel more comfortable
opposing equality than opposing freedom. Conversely, campaigners for
legalizing gay marriage - being mostly on the left - feel more
comfortable with talk of equality.

Much opposition to the idea of gay marriages is based on the false premise that 'allowing' it gives the state the right to enforce it. They are wrong - it isn't for the state to force, allow or even enable gay marriage in churches. It should simply be something in which they take no interest - which should of course also apply to the CofE itself. Disestablishment would itself be a step towards greater freedom.

December 15, 2012

As you might excpect from the blog title, I have something more than just a passing interest in the idea of libertarianism. I don't claim to be libertarian, or anarchist, but I do believe the state is far too intrusive. So, over the years I've followed a number of libertarian or libertarian leaning blogs.

For some reason however, I find that most of the UK based blogs degenerate after a while into illiterate hysterical paranoia and conspiracy theories, nastiness, misogyny and worse. I'm not going to name names, I don't want to have to spend hours deleting abuse and threats from the comments, but spend a few minutes looking around and you will see what I mean.

So, if you can recommend somewhere that isn't just rants about Marxist Obama, please include a link in the comments. Any abuse that does sneak through will be deleted, and the offender will be barred without warning.

August 20, 2012

Republican Congressman Todd Akin seems to have some peculiar ideas. Asked whether he would like abortion to be banned even if the pregnancy was the result of rape he replied: "It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that is really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Quite what he means by 'legitimate rape' I'm not sure, but even setting that nonsense aside this seems a clear demonstration of the scientific ignorance of the religious right in the US. No doubt we can expect more nonsense like this from Romney and Ryan as the presidential election progresses.

August 18, 2012

Purely by chance I realise that this blog started on this date in 2003. To be honest I never expected to be still here. There have been gaps, and the focus has shifted from time to time but over the years I have produced a lot that I am still proud to have written. I hope to stay and carry on writing for many more years yet.

An even more significant anniversary comes up in November - 40 years married (to the same woman!)

In a series of papers published last year, BEST presented their statistical analysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports spanning the last 200 years, controlling for possible biases in the data that are often cited by skeptics as reasons to doubt the reality of global warming.

Their analysis indicated that global warming is real — that the average global land temperature has risen by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) since 1750, including 1.5 degrees F (0.9 degrees Celsius) in the past 50 years. The numbers closely agree with the findings of past studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and others; but finally, they were rigorous enough to satisfy Muller.

Now, in a brand new study that probed the causes of that warming, the BEST team says it has cleared from blame the natural variations in Earth's climate that so often get implicated by skeptics. Muller and his colleagues implicate carbon dioxide emissions by humans as essentially the sole cause of global warming.

"The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried," he wrote Saturday (July 28) in a New York Times editorial. "Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end skepticism, but they raise the bar: To be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does."

July 03, 2012

In Shakespeare's Henry V, the King wanders the camp talking incognito to various of his soldiers about the day to come. One of them, Michael Williams has this to say:

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hatha heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs andarms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall jointogether at the latter day and cry all 'We died atsuch a place;' some swearing, some crying for asurgeon, some upon their wives left poor behindthem, some upon the debts they owe, some upon theirchildren rawly left. I am afeard there are few diewell that die in a battle; for how can theycharitably dispose of any thing, when blood is theirargument? Now, if these men do not die well, itwill be a black matter for the king that led them toit; whom to disobey were against all proportion ofsubjection.